All day he sat patiently. The sky changed from ebony to deep pre-dawn blue. Rays of warmer hues lightened the ultraviolet as the sun approached the horizon only to surpass it in its steady trek across the firmament. He, like the Sun, stood watch day after day without eyes to witness the splendor of the world. The celestial being was a fixed point in space commanding all manner of planets, stars and other space debris to twirl in a never-ending dance about it. The same was true of Fred, though no one and nothing revolved around him. He was after all manufactured to serve one purpose only: to be grown, slaughtered and processed in the most economical fashion possible so that the masses could eat his meat for the lowest cost while still turning satisfactory profit through volume. The feeding tube was nearly dry. John hadn’t attended to Fred’s apparatus in some time. The creature had lost weight, but the scientist was so thoroughly enthralled in his work that he hadn’t noticed. At first Fred flailed a little when John was in the room in an attempt to get his creator’s attention. Having no mouth or vocal cords, he could not call and his efforts were in vain. He sat there on the desk with a dry tube and nothing to nourish him, patiently dying. Many would argue whether his existence could be considered living. Whether it mattered, as he wasn’t a creature of God but instead an abomination technologically constructed by man. Fred had no soul, they’d say. The pittance of grey matter that his genetic code allowed for was just barely enough to afford his growth. He affected life, but he was horrible to behold with freakish multiple limbs like a spider, no features or mobility and indeed no survivability at all without the pipettes. He was dependent, like a fetus. His mother was neglectful however and the womb was outside John’s body, thus greatly endangering Fred’s capacity to continue on without manual maintenance. He sat patiently dying and affecting life whilst great lofty intelligences debated the morality of his coming into being. Little did he know that he would become a catalyst for nightmares, urban legends, and activism. He was wholly unaware of the many people who would retch and swear off fast food for a week upon first beholding his form just prior to lapsing back into complacency and indifference. Simultaneously ignored and focused on, Fred suffered in that singular fashion reserved for glamorous stars, abominations and children. Hours passed, the clock on the wall methodically interrupting the silence as motes of dust floated on unseen currents of air, catching the light as they crossed the beams peeking in from the drawn curtains. It was stifling, but Fred didn’t have to worry about sweating out his dwindling water supply as he had no such glands to regulate his temperature. They were inconvenient and thus excluded from his genetic coding. John was away, and so the window A/C unit hadn’t been set for some time and the ventilation in the old house left something to be desired. None of this was apparent to Fred, whose lack of sensory organs and larger regions of the brain kept him from the tedium of his wasting existence. Sometime in the afternoon as the sun began to shift and elongate the shadows, the air stirred and danced invisibly away from the door as it creaked ominously open. Smallish feet scuffed the floor as Fred’s brother Darren entered the office despite having been forbidden to do so. Carefully he looked around and shut the portal behind himself, wincing as the hinges offered up dull groans of protest. His eyes locked on Fred. He paid no attention to the papers, furniture, books or other objects in the room as they held less fascination for him than the specks of dust gliding past the window on unknowable missions driven by inertia. The strange creation engineered by his father, however, was of immediate and ongoing curiosity. Darren drew close and stood on the chair, leaning over the desk carefully so as to leave the allegedly organized chaos of John’s workspace undisturbed. He breathed slowly and hotly through his mouth. He didn’t blink. He lingered this way in anticipation of Fred’s eventual motion, not knowing that the thing had grown weak from starvation. After several minutes, he shifted his weight and placed a hand on the worn wood, extending the index finger of his opposite hand in an almost accusatory gesture. He paused several inches from Fred’s skin. “Hey!” he tested. Fred did nothing, as he could not hear. “Hey, Fred!” Darren tried again. Still no response. “Fred…are you alive?” This continued through a gamut of variations on a theme, until the boy grew impatient as mobile and truly living beings are apt to do. The restlessness caused him to become brave, and he poked the creature. Fred did not react. “Eww.” Darren breathed, wrinkling his nose and frowning at the alien sensation of his brother’s skin. He pushed harder this time, and the creature fell over. Finally Fred stirred, ineffectively flailing with what reserves of strength he had left. This startled Darren, who simultaneously cried out and jumped back. He immediately fled the room, leaving the debatably living yet definitely perishing creation in its toppled state. The sun continued to lengthen the shadows. Fred lay patiently dying on the desk.

Buzz buzz. I’d set my cell phone to vibrate in a vain attempt to dampen its damaging effects on my concentration. I proceeded to return to my work rather than checking it. Buzz buzz. Scant moments later the device kindly reminded me that my wife was intent on sabotaging my efforts to correlate the newest data from the lab. My eye twitched and I exhaled through my mouth as if I were breathing fire. Snatching up and unlocking the offending modern convenience, I read her all-important message: --Dinner’s ready. I inhaled a slow, noisy breath through my nose, setting the phone down and placing both palms on my face. I rubbed ever upward slowly, my fingertips prying underneath my thick glasses, squirming towards my eyes to gently massage them. When that was done I repositioned the digits to my temples briefly as the blood throbbed painfully. I looked down at the dimming screen, perched atop my handwritten scrawl on the clipboard I’d lifted from the research facility. My focus vacillated between the paper and the repugnant summoning instrument shrouding it: first up to the right, then to the screen as it clicked off, then down, then across to the upper left before moving in a clockwise direction tracing across the visible portion of the notes. As if prompted by the notion of potential sustenance, my stomach growled. The thing was wizened, grey and shrunken like some sort of sad and tired grandfather. When it deigned to request something of me, I found myself compelled to oblige however grudgingly. There were skid marks in the hardwood floor where the legs of my rickety antidiluvian chair laboriously dragged across the surface. The grooves were filled with dust and tinged with remnants of old wax from Cheryl’s former efforts to maintain a semblance of order in my office. Fred had scared her off, particularly after Darren declared the little monstrosity to be his brother. The corner of one side of my mouth perked slightly as the muscles deep in my cheeks tugged insistently, forming a faint and lopsided smirk in response to the memory of that day. How glorious it’d been. Dinner might in fact be more pleasant than anticipated, should my son opt to demonstrate his singular expressiveness again. I would have to attend, then, and see for myself.Skriiiitch. The chair moved backward and slightly to the right along its predestined path as I stood. The furniture pads my wife once carefully applied had long since worn down to nothing or had flecked off, the adhesive too weak to withstand the force of friction along such an uneven surface as the ruts my repetition had created. Per their prevailing tendency, my unused joints crackled in protest. I rotated my shoulders back and flicked my neck first to one side and then the other, rewarded with a crisp snapping sound as the gases escaped the synovial fluid occupying the joint capsules. As usual I began to convince myself that perhaps I needed the break after all. The floorboards outside the door just two steps to the left always creaked under my weight, gangly as I was. This functioned as a sort of alarm system for me, warning me whenever my inner sanctum was seconds away from being infiltrated. It was similarly a notification to the other occupants in my home that I was on the move, which was a rare scenario. Wraithlike and lost in thought, I passed through the hall and descended the stairs as if floating. Had Cheryl the mind to throw a Halloween party she wouldn’t need to decorate as my presence alone was sufficient, particularly given the reputation I’d acquired. Darren would never bother with such a trivial social endeavor, but my wife felt a mysterious need to integrate with the local populace. Despite the consistent failure of her efforts, she was tireless in this specific cause. I couldn’t fathom her urgency, yet her single-minded drive was a common trait between us. Perhaps at one time long ago we’d shared one vision, but that era was left to dust and darkness. I chalked it up to hormones. Darren noticed me even as I silently walked in the shadows, not bothering to flick the switches to illuminate my path. Cast in the warm glow of the dining room’s cheerful lamplight, his form was soft, having years left before his features shed their childlike gentleness. His eyes however were hawkish and deep, pools of intensity that mirrored the unhealthy monomania possessed by both of his parents. I wondered what he might adopt as his crusade, and furthermore when the signs would begin to surface. When had I in my youth taken so intensely to science? Darren was eight now, possibly. I couldn’t be sure. I never remembered such things unless they impacted my occupation. My present doings related to streamlining Fred’s brethren and despite his insistence of relation to the semi-responsive contrivance on my desk I hadn’t taken my son up as a test subject. Cheryl flinched a trifle, caught off guard as I stepped into the genial radiant circle staving off the night. Light created shadows. My existence shouldn’t have surprised her, yet somehow it did all the same. Humanity had an interesting way of lying to itself rather convincingly, or simply omitting facts to suit the pervading worldview. Coping with my simultaneous permanence and impermanence was a daily challenge. “Oh! Good evening, honey. I wasn’t sure if you’d be joining us. We just sat down. Here, let me get your plate.” She uttered with a half-smile as her face flushed a delicate pink. The discoloration was likely due to her embarrassment, knowing that I’d of course seen her jump. I took my seat at the head of the table. “Thank you. What’s for dinner?” It soothed her when I elected to embrace social norms. I even made a show of peering over at Darren’s place setting. He didn’t react until my eyes locked with his. We exchanged a knowing leer. “Steak, green beans, mashed potatoes and salad.” Cheryl responded from the kitchen as she served up my food. Long ago she’d realized that I would only ladle up a small portion for myself, and like the mother she was she insisted that I eat more. She additionally asserted that I was not to leave the table until I cleared my plate of whatever she put on it. Although it sounded absurd, I was predominantly fueled by coffee and the sparse instances when I sat down for a meal away from my work were so few and far between that she was the last bastion preventing my already emaciated form from becoming wholly skeletal. Thus, I didn’t fight her on it. Darren was similarly obligated and I wholly believed that without her acting as the linchpin affixing us to a semblance of an eating schedule the two of us would waste away. “Here you are, John.” I had to admit that the food smelled delicious. My stomach stirred from its usual stupor and announced its intention to digest everything promptly. Cheryl sat down next to me across from our son, who seemed lost in the corridors of his own mind. “Darren, let’s say a prayer.” She bowed her dark head, folding her small, soft hands in on each other as she muttered quietly to herself, almost unintelligibly. It may as well have been in another language for all the use it served. Darren however obediently mimicked her motions and mumbled his own incantation. Out of curiosity I attuned my hearing to his request. “Dear Lord, please let the teachers at school stop trying to make me play with the stupid kids in my class since I just want to read my book. And Mom too. She keeps bringing these dumb neighbors over and I hate them. Amen.” Had I been forced to offer a plea to an alleged invisible protector, I may have said something similar myself. I stored this information in my memory for later use. Of the late I’d begun noticing that Darren was unavoidably a little human, yet still separate from the run of the mill herd. He was in fact remarkably akin to what I’d been like at his age. Was he seven? Ten? What grade was he in, anyway? It was difficult for me to discern particularly as his mother treated him like a child much younger than his demeanor projected. The ceremony was over, and it came time to consume the food my wife had so carefully prepared. She was, if nothing else, a phenomenal cook. She took delight in manifesting the countless recipes she found in magazines and on the internet. Her skill in the kitchen was her saving grace and lit the beacon of hope for her eventual assimilation into the community. I’d married her in part for her drive, but she was also the only person I’d met who was capable of instilling a desire to eat within me. The rigors of my mind required nourishment, yet the very act of taking time to masticate, swallow and digest – not to mention prepare – the necessary comestibles were a tedium I barely tolerated. It was almost painful, except in the case of her cooking. “It smells wonderful, Cheryl.” I smiled genuinely, a slight inflection to my voice that pleased her as she returned the gesture. The times I demonstrated approval were scant and nearly all related to her efforts to act as my lifeline. Her eyes seemed to sparkle. “I hope it’s okay! I tried a new marinade.” I didn’t bother to respond, instead cutting a piece of steak. I preferred my meat rare, and it was appropriately bloody and pink. My mouth watered at the sound of the flesh severing beneath my knife. I took a bite and savored it, rolling the juice with my tongue as I chewed. I nodded as an expression of my enjoyment. The meal progressed as usual, but I noticed that Cheryl paused in her daily activity report twice, glancing down at my steak momentarily each time. “What’s wrong?” I inquired directly. She looked befuddled. “What do you mean?” I took my time chewing the bite I’d taken, swallowed and took a sip of my beverage. I gesticulated at her with my fork, using my free hand to thrust my glasses up again as they’d slid down once more. “You keep staring at my plate. Did you poison me?” I asked this with a mildly jovial lilt, intending to help her relax despite the fact that I was so rarely jocular. “No, of course not.” Darren nonetheless looked between her and my plate, then down at his own. He stopped mid-mastication, absorbed in the notion that his mother might have attempted to kill me. “I’m just preoccupied, is all.” “With?” There was a long pause as she hesitated. I knew that it was a problem with me that she didn’t wish to discuss in front of our son. “Go ahead.” I encouraged. “I was just thinking about your—the—that—” She was having difficulty forming the words. I smiled, this time in amusement. “You were thinking about Fred.” Cheryl looked confused. “The experiment on my desk.” Her shoulders and back stiffened as she realized that I’d given it a human name. Some of the blood left her cheeks and lips. “Uh…” she glanced momentarily at Darren. “Yes. That.” “What about it?” She was silent again. I waited. “Do you have to keep it here? I don’t…like it.” “That’s okay. I doubt you’ve hurt his feelings.” My son chuckled softly and returned to eating, entirely unmoved other than his mild entertainment at her absurdity. She fell silent and focused on her plate for the rest of the meal. When she stood a short time later to clear away the dishes, I noticed that she’d only consumed half of her steak. She was imagining eating Fred again.